Burnout — How I Dealt with It
I thought everything was going well. I was happy with my life, happy with everything I do, and was always looking forward to tomorrow.
But out of nowhere, this shadow was pulling me back. Slowly and slowly I wasn’t able to walk the path of happiness anymore. This shadow known as burnout detoured me into a path of mediocrity, sadness, and constant self-doubt.
I didn’t know it, but I had burnout.
This shadow took over me; it made decisions for me. Even though I knew this isn’t what I wanted to do, I ended up just doing it. Everything that I loved doing — learning, meditating, working out — just turned into things that disinterested me. I didn’t want to do those anymore. The path of mediocrity that I was following made me want to just binge Netflix, scroll through social media every 5 seconds, and just making sure that the only tab that I had open was either YouTube or Netflix became my lifestyle. I hit a wall. A wall much greater than the ones I’ve ever faced before.
My constant surroundings of self-doubt and remorse just made me want to take a U-turn. Lucky for me, I didn’t, and here I am today, gathering enough strength to write out this article.
I’ll be talking about what burnout is, how I got burnout, how I overcame it, and what I’ve learned.
What even is burnout?
A simple Merriam-Webster search gives the answer:
But it isn’t that simple. Sri, you don’t even have a job? Heck, you’re not even in university, what are you even talking about?
Sure, I may not be in university, or even have a job, but that doesn’t mean that I didn’t face burnout. Burnout is really when you lose motivation to work or do something because you’re mentally or emotionally drained, and you just don’t want to work anymore. You just feel so exhausted to the point that you can’t even type out gmail.com or linkedin.com to check your socials and get started. Your friends tell you to take a break but that only makes you feel even worse. That’s because you feel guilty, since you need to now rely on other people, and really can’t stand up for yourself properly. You just don’t even know what to do. That’s exactly what I faced. I just completely lost motivation and faith in what I was doing, and I didn’t know what to do.
The biggest cause of burnout is mainly the fact that you can’t meet expectations and constant demands.
Almost all of my close friends call me an overachiever. This is what keeps me going. People like that I’m putting in the work and that I’m getting results. I was happy with the fact that I was getting results and that people constantly looked forward to more work. I wanted myself to speed up that results process. And that’s where the downfall began.
I set expectations so high that I ended up falling harder than I climbed. And I thought it was over. That I fell so hard that I wouldn’t be able to climb back up as fast as I wanted to. The mental and emotional exhaustion that trailed with me started kicking in and I just lost motivation.
I just didn’t feel like working. I couldn’t find that kick of motivation and happiness that would push me back up. I started sleeping in and going to sleep late. I always felt tired and just felt completely lost. Prince EA motivation videos didn’t help (Prince EA is a great guy with some home-hitting videos. You should check him out.) and I just didn’t know what to do.
I’m learning a lot about Machine Learning right now and how it’s changing the world. I’ve done a bunch of projects on them (check them out here!) and have been grinding this a lot. I’m constantly spending at least 8 hours just learning material every single day. Because I was getting a plethora of results, my expectations were high. If the results didn’t come in, then I’d lose a bit of motivation but I’d still move on thinking that I was close. But nothing came. I was still stuck at square one. And that’s how it hit.
Ok, ok, enough talking about how I got burnout. Let’s move on to how I “overcame” this, and the lessons I’ve learned.
How I overcame burnout
Overcoming burnout isn’t as easy as it sounds. You gotta find your luggage of motivation, happiness, and self-esteem to fly back to the top. Usually, most people hit rock bottom and don’t know how to climb back up. That’s how I exactly felt.
People who have burnout want to get back to where they were before, but they just don’t know how.
I had to spend weeks trying to overcome this. I tried waking up early, doing meditation, sleeping early, but nothing worked. I just felt tired mentally and didn’t know what to do.
I mentioned above that my friends told me to take breaks. I didn’t know what that really meant so I binged Netflix considering that it was a “break” (haha ikik I’m really dumb!). I felt even more remorseful after for the amount of time that I’ve wasted so I decided to do something else.
Work out
I’m 110% sure this is not the solution you wanted, but it’s what you need. Working out helped me feel really good about myself since it completely eradicated the thought of burnout and my “stress”. The consensus for working out is that it’s supposed to make you feel even more exhausted and tired. But in reality, it energizes you. Sure, you may find it difficult to hold a 30sec plank of find it difficult to do a single pushup but when you overcome this and your ability to do a proper pushup, you feel really good about yourself.
“Hey, I did one pushup, look at how far I progressed. Keep this up and I’ll be doing 5, and then 10, and then 25 in no time!”
Working out also gave me the impression that I’d be fit and more athletic in no time! At first, you might feel completely exhausted but if you continue doing this, you’ll mentally (don’t forget physically!) see astonishing changes! tech.co released an article showing that doing cardio drastically decreased probabilities of burn out. Another study by the NCBI (National Center for Biotechnology Information) can back me up on this. Exercise eliminates burnout.
If you’re facing burnout or a slump, then just start working out, exercising, or playing sports. Having a goal such as scoring in soccer or getting a 3-pointer in basketball will keep you fueled and eradicate thoughts of stress.
Working out helped to clear my mind and deteriorate my fatigue.
Taking a break
“Sri, you already said like 10 times that talking a break means watching Netflix. What does taking a break even mean?”
I spend more than 15 hours just binging Netflix cuz I thought that’s what a break means. A break literally means to just do something else. In my case, stop working on Machine Learning. Work on something else. Write an article, update your website, braindate with people, but just don’t do anything related to Machine Learning. And that’s what I did. I worked on developing a Python curriculum that I’ll be teaching (if you/your sibling wants to learn Python, I’m willing to teach. Just DM me) to kids in middle school.
I didn’t consider opening my Jupyter notebook to get to work; I just opened Docs and Spotify and I was ready to go!
One thing that I noticed when I took this “break” was that I felt a lot more refreshed and a lot less stressed since I didn’t have to worry about Machine Learning anymore. At some point, I felt like going back to work on ML and that’s when I felt a lot better and prepared.
Do a mental-wellness check
This was probably one of the most controversial things that I did but it turned out well. I’m not a sensitive or an emotional guy so my mental health is pretty good (although I worry a lot!). So, it’s not like those “high-quality” mental-wellness checks, I just did it on a Google Doc.
Here’s how I formatted it:
- Identify the problem
- What’s the root cause of this problem?
- What should I do about it?
- How can I come back stronger and prevent this from happening again?
It’s not overly complicated but basic enough for you to take some time to think about this. Don’t aim to just finish it; really think about what you’re saying and make sure that whatever you type is an honest reflection of yourself. What I did was that I shared this with some of my closest friends for advice and any other thoughts. Try that too. Gaining a different perspective will undoubtedly help.
I hope that my perspective and experience helped you in any way. If you got any questions or want to know how my mental-wellness check looked like, email me at info@srianumakonda.com!
Let’s get straight in my takeaways!
Takeaway #👆: Stop expecting results to come faster even if you put in more work
This was undoubtedly the biggest takeaway that I’ve learned from this experience.
I started grinding and working more thinking that I’d crave the end result. Turns out that I ended up quitting within the first hour itself.
Just because you spend more time working doesn’t mean results will follow you faster.
I didn’t know this, which is what inevitably caused burnout. I kept on grinding for the end result and not the process. Going through this experience was a huge eye-opener on understanding to work smart, not hard.
My parents always show these cool kids around the world and what cool stuff they’re doing. It always fuels me to do better and produce amazing results. But because I craved results more than the process, I hit that dead wall.
It doesn’t matter if you get results or not. Understanding the process itself is a result. I thought that finishing up the Machine Learning model and watching it train was a success. Turns out I got a fat ❌ on that.
If you constantly want results, you’re not gonna get them. Sure you might get them the first few weeks, but at some point, your performance is gonna decline and you will eventually lose interest. You gotta be patient in what you do.
Takeaway #✌: Be patient
This is similar to the point above. You gotta be patient in whatever you do. Going back to the point above, I always expected things to come fast. Whether it be my Amazon Prime coming one day late or having to sit down and watch my model waste 15 minutes of my life by watching it train, I want things to be done fast. Since this experience was filled with delays and prolonged results, I’ve lost my mind 🤯.
I just hate waiting. I can’t stand lines that move slower than turtles 🐢 (this is why I never go to Costco! 🛒). My patience is really bad. I get mad if my brother takes a pencil from my workspace without asking me and I’m usually not a patient person. I’ve done mediation and it’s helped, but I seriously still have such a long way to go.
I’m also really competitive. I always wanna see myself at the top, but that’s something that has changed recently. If I ever saw someone do something cool, I’m always challenged to beat them; climb even higher and always push myself to do better. This constant demand that I always put on myself turned back at me and hit me hard. Being patient and taking your time is something that I learned.
Takeaway #🤟: Know when to take a break
Another really big point worth mentioning. Most people don’t really understand what a break is. It isn’t just going for a walk and then getting back to work (although that might work for some people). It’s not binging Netflix or YouTube and expecting everything to get itself back together. “How you train is how you perform.”
In my case, I just ignored the existence of Machine Learning and AI. I didn’t even work on it. I just worked on other things that I needed to get done. Like preparing my Python curriculum, making minor updates to my website, getting twitter, and learning math. Jut NOTHING to do with Machine Learning.
This sounds dumb, right? If I’m so passionate about Machine Learning, why do I pretend that it doesn’t exist? Well, the answer is straightforward. I remember my mom used to tell me when I was young that if I was mad at something, go sleep. Like, go sleep when you’re gonna burst. Weirdest thing I’ve ever heard, but it works. Why? Because you clear up your mind when you literally sleep or just do something completely unrelated (take a walk or play sports!).
This method helped me calm myself down since I get tensed easily. Understanding that I don’t need to do everything at once and burn myself out was key to overcoming this. I wanted to cram everything within my 24 hours every day. Now I’ve learned that sometimes, you gotta leave stuff to do for tomorrow.
Takeaway #🤞🤘: There is no such thing as an overnight success
This is self-explanatory in the title itself. There is NO SUCH THING as an overnight success. You’re not gonna sleep and then wake up the next day shredded. If you wanna get shredded, you gotta put in the work. You gotta do cardio, abs, HIIT, weight lifting. If you want results, you gotta put in the effort.
I know that I put in the effort. I was learning and doing everything right. What went wrong? I just couldn’t handle the emotional fatigue. I didn’t check up on myself. I just grinded to the point I had nothing left, hoping I’d pull off an Elon Musk.
I rushed things, thinking that it’d help me even more. Instead, it just backfired even harder on me. I thought that I’d be able to wake up with results. I ended waking up with fatigue and sadness instead. This relates back to the previous points. You gotta be patient in what you do and then the results will come. You can’t just force it out.
Before you go, an additional resource that I’d highly recommend you to take a look at is Sigil Wen’s video on the Quarantine Slump he faced. Do some research on the difference between a slump and a burnout and understand what you’re facing. I would list the answer here but I think you’ll like it better when you put in the work yourself. ;)
I’m 100% sure that that’ll help you (especially if you’re a student!). Go take a look at it, like and sub it (Sigil to 600!).
